Market Mindset Reduces Endorsement of Individualizing Moral Foundations, but Not in Liberals

Authors

  • Tomasz Zaleskiewicz
    Center for Research in Economic Behavior, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland
  • Agata Gasiorowska
    Center for Research in Economic Behavior, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland
  • Anna Kuzminska
    Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

People with a market mindset attend to ratios and rates, and allocate rewards adequately to costs but are less sensitive to feelings. In this project, we demonstrate that activating a market mindset also affects people’s acceptance of free-market principles and their endorsement of individualizing moral dimensions—care/harm and fairness/cheating. Experiment 1 documented that a market mindset positively impacted people’s endorsement of fair market ideology. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the salience of such a market mindset hampered the importance of individualizing moral dimensions. Importantly, we found that political orientation moderated the negative effect of a market mindset on the endorsement of individualizing moral foundations—this effect held for participants who declared moderate and conservative political orientations, but not for liberals.